Why Shopify? Along the years we had the chance to work in BigCommerce, test Prestashop and WooCommerce. We don’t plan to make a full comparison of these well known solutions for an online store, instead we’d like to write about why we choose Shopify to provide e-commerce services.
What is a Shopify webstore?
Shopify is one of the best and most popular e-commerce platform in the world. Moreover Shopify is not only a webstore platform, but also a POS system that can connect your online store with your offline business.
You can also easily sell with Shopify on online marketplaces and social media. Developed in Canada, Shopify serves more than 1,000,000 online stores in over 175 countries.
Why is the Shopify e-commerce so popular?
The huge popularity of Shopify is due to its highly advanced and user-friendly system. Shopify can be one of the best choices for creating an online store as it has a low entry threshold. In practice, this means that you don’t need to read through 300 pages of books to get the basics of running a Shopify webstore.
The knowledge of running your online store can be learned relatively quickly even for users with minimal expertise. In fact, Shopify provides a wealth of tutorials, articles, videos, guides and other free resources to help those interested in e-commerce to become as knowledgeable as possible.
How does the Shopify online store work?
Shopify is not a boxed product to buy, but a full-fledged online e-commerce platform that works with a monthly subscription. You don’t have to worry installing servers, renting hosting space, safety and backups, you just have to focus on the store itself. This is a very positive thing.
Shopify design, Shopify templates/themes
Good design is the basis of building an online store. Shopify provides a dedicated web page for its users to access themes https://themes.shopify.com. Here you can find more than a hundred Shopify templates, most of them are paid, but some of them are free Shopify templates.
It’s important to note that Shopify has high standards for official template developers, but the quality of the official Shopify themes is variable. You can always improve your storefront by theme customization, one of the great features of Shopify being the flexibility of design especially since the introduction of new theme architecture called Online Store 2.0.
Free Shopify themes
As mentioned above Shopify’s greatest strength is its scalability and this is reflected at the Shopify theme design level as well. You can even choose a Shopify store theme for free, it won’t cost you a penny.
In practice, however, the quality of free Shopify webstore templates is obviously not at the highest level. In order to get them to an acceptable level, it doesn’t hurt to have the technical and graphical knowledge to modify Shopify webstore design. If you don’t have these, the easiest way is to hire a professional.
Paid Shopify themes
Better functionality and better visuals mean more customers and higher conversion rates. For this Shopify offers paid templates on its official website, but you can also buy Shopify templates from external websites.
It’s important to note that Shopify can only provide official support for templates it produces itself. Also the themes accepted on their platform are more reliable than external ones, being rigorously vetted before listing. This is important for Shopify webstore development, because if you choose a template with the wrong support, the development time can increase significantly. This can even lead to choosing a completely new template if you don’t get the help or you get the wrong help from the support.
Shopify apps
There is a huge range of Shopify apps available to help you expand your Shopify store potential. Same as Shopify templates, Shopify apps are available for purchase on a dedicated webpage at https://apps.shopify.com.
The quality of Shopify apps is also variable, and most of the apps are available on a monthly subscription basis, so you should shop carefully, as using apps can quickly blow your monthly e-commerce budget sky high. We can help you select only the necessary ones to run your store.
Shopify Advantages
Disadvantages
Calculating prices
Conclusion
Shopify is one of the most popular and optimized e-commerce systems worldwide. If you are thinking of starting your own online store, the opinion is that you should definitely take a look at Shopify.
A Shopify storefront gives you plenty of opportunities to create a successful e-commerce business, but it can’t guarantee success on its own. In fact no other e-commerce platform or plugin is a recipe for success just by using it. Don’t expect miracles! If you don’t have the right knowledge, experience, market research, surveys and plans for your e-commerce store, you’re in big trouble. Most would-be e-commerce owners think that if they pay a tidy sum of money for an e-commerce store, the revenue will flow in on its own. This is not how it works.
